Snowy Fun...Without the Cold!

 I love to experience winter- only when sitting in front of the fire. I am not a huge fan of cold weather, so I love to think of ideas to play with the idea of snow, rather than the real thing! Here are some quick and easy activities that you can use with your kids to play with "snow".

First, I wanted to share a fun freebie that you can get right here! This game is called "Snowball Fight". It is really just "WAR", but with a snowy twist. I created some snowball pieces that you can use to play the game, numerals 0-50. Choose the numbers that you want and print at least 2 copies of those pages.

You can also play "Snowball Fight" with playing cards.

I also use the cards from my Interactive Play Dough Pack. We play with ten frames, addition sentences, and tally marks; as well as, with numerals. You can see the play dough mat pack in action here.

Get your own FREE copy of the"Snowball Fight" game here! 

Included with the Free copy of "Snowball Fight", is a blank ten frame that you can use for so many things!

Draw cards 0-10 and have students create the number on the ten frame. Use puff balls, erasers, cotton balls, dry erase, rocks, or anything you choose! We used silvery puff balls. 

If you want ten frames with numerals on them, you can check out my Snowballs Interactive Pack. It has ten frames and numerals, both with a model and without.

 We also used cotton balls with egg carton ten frames. I love using egg cartons, because it makes the ten frame so concrete. See it in action here and get a freebie.

 You can also use cotton ball "snow" for estimating. We made a arctic ocean (a box with a hole in it). Kids will push their hand through a hole in the ice and grab as many ice balls as they can. Before counting, estimate how many ice balls they grabbed.

 Then, count and find the actual number. It is such an easy activity, but so much fun!

 This was an impromptu game that was a total hit! I wrote snow ball sight words on the paper and my daughter took my husband's back scratcher to "shovel" off the snow. She shoveled, read, and wrote.

 It was basically no prep, but grabbed her attention for a long time.

Thanks for checking out some of my snowy ideas! Hope you found something that you can use with your own kids.

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Hands On Learning In Autumn

Autumn is the perfect time of the year for hands on learning! There are so many great themes in the Autumn that naturally lead to hands on activities. By integrating hands on learning into our teaching, we can strengthen understanding of all the skills we are targeting. 

Have you tried sensory bins in your classroom yet? Sensory bins rock! They easily get students engaged in learning. Who wouldn't want to put their hands in?! Nature gives you all the sensory bin supplies you need in the fall! Kids can't wait to get their hands into pine combs, pine needs, sticks, acorns, leaves, etc. Once the leaves dry up and get crumbly, add dried rice and beans to keep the sensory bucket going. You can easily integrate academic skills with the sensory bucket. In the picture below, students are finding cards containing different sets of fall items. After finding the pictures, the students have to match it to the number or a number line. 

Autumn is also the perfect time to work on the food pyramid unit. Most of the fall holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, etc) have foods associated with them. During the fall, we work on trying new foods, doing taste tests & graphing the results, etc. A big hit with my kiddos is exploring the 5 senses with popcorn. We make a list of descriptive words that we can then use in our writing.

One of my all time favorite themes occurs in Autumn...Fire Safety! There are so many great ways to add movement and hands on learning during this unit. We practice concepts like "Get low and go!" and "Stop, drop and roll." Here we are practicing getting low. We pretended the blanket was smoke that we had to stay under. Through these kinds of activities, our students have a much better understanding of how to do it if they should ever be near a fire.

How do you add in hands on activities in your classroom? 

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Fall for Geography

Happy fall, ya'll!  It's Nicole from Learning Lab again.  39+ weeks pregnant and so ready to meet this little love!

What do autumn and geography have in common?  Well, most of the time geography is the first unit taught in social studies, no matter what grade you teach so it happens to be taught in autumn.

One of my favorite and most visually pleasing activities is to create balloon globes with my students.  They look wonderful hanging from the ceiling during open house.  The kids love creating them and their parents love looking at them.  It is the perfect culmination to a world geography unit or review.

Last year, somebody purchased my Balloon Globes product, but instead of using balloons, they were creative and used pumpkins.  How fun?!?  I kept that idea in the back of my head because I knew I wanted to try it!

I am home with my kids waiting for my third baby to be born any day so today I made my own pumpkin globe.  I think it looks great and my kids loved learning about the continents.  My 4-year-old daughter suggested that my belly could also be turned into a globe.  I'll spare you that image and just show you our pumpkin globe.

Pumpkins would be pretty  expensive to use with your entire class and I just LOVE the way the balloon globes look on dark blue balloons.  The kids always do such a nice job putting their globes together.  

Here are some tips for success:

* Start your globes a few days before you want them to be finished.  It takes awhile for the kids to color and cut out everything.  

*  Ziplock bags help keep your students organized.  They can store their already cut pieces in the bags.

*  Blow up the balloons the day you want to display them.  This will cut back on popped or deflated balloons.  

*  The North Pole is where you tie the balloon (or the top of your pumpkin).  If your students cut out the center of the North Pole circle, you can slip it over the knot and string.  

*  Use regular white glue instead of a glue stick or tape.  

Thanks for stopping by today!  Next time I see you guys, I will have three babies!  I cannot believe it!

Have a great rest of your October!

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